FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
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IMLS Contact |
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IMLS and Sloan Foundation Award $1 Million to ARL for SHARE Notification Service
Online service will announce availability of new research
Washington, DC – The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) announced the award of a $500,000 out-of-cycle National Leadership Grant for Libraries to the Association of Research Libraries (ARL) to develop and launch the Shared Access Research Ecosystem (SHARE) Notification Service. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will provide matching funding of $500,000. SHARE is a collaborative initiative of ARL, the Association of American Universities (AAU), and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) to ensure the preservation of, access to, and reuse of research findings and reports.
The SHARE Notification Service addresses a significant challenge faced by all entities in the research ecosystem, which comprises funding agencies, university research offices, and institutional and disciplinary repositories. It is the problem of knowing when new research—whether a published article or data set—has been made available. Across academic disciplines, principal investigators and other scholars do not have any single, structured way to report on new research releases in a timely and comprehensive manner.
The IMLS grant supports the development of a long-term solution for higher education to manage its digital assets and to address this problem by strengthening efforts to identify, discover, and track research outputs. The project will also serve as a response to the 2013 White House directive for broader public access to and preservation of research, data, and publications resulting from federal research investment.
“At IMLS, we look for proposals with reach and deep, lasting impacts for the best ‘returns’ on our federal investment dollars. The SHARE initiative certainly meets those criteria,” said IMLS Director Susan H. Hildreth. “We are grateful to have the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation as our funding partner on this important work to make the wide universe of academic research more discoverable to everyone.”
“SHARE promises to be an essential piece of scholarly communication infrastructure, enabling innovative tools and services on top of traditional and emerging research products," says Dr. Josh Greenberg, Director of the Sloan Foundation’s Scholarly Communication program. “We are proud to partner with the IMLS in support of this visionary platform.”
SHARE’s first project, the Notification Service, will inform stakeholders in a timely, structured, and comprehensive manner when research results are released. SHARE’s Notification Service will be a tool that aggregates “event notices” (metadata about research projects and products) from a wide variety of sources into publicly accessible information that can be used by a wide variety of users.
SHARE’s long-term vision is a robust repository ecosystem that includes a registry element, a discovery element, and a content aggregator in addition to the Notification Service. For more information about the project, please contact Judy Ruttenberg, 202-296-2296, share@arl.org. You can also visit the SHARE webpage and follow SHARE on Twitter and Facebook.
The Institute of Museum and Library Services is the primary source of federal support for the nation’s 123,000 libraries and 17,500 museums. Our mission is to inspire libraries and museums to advance innovation, lifelong learning, and cultural and civic engagement. Our grant making, policy development, and research help libraries and museums deliver valuable services that make it possible for communities and individuals to thrive. To learn more, visit www.imls.gov and follow us on Facebook and Twitter.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grantmaking institution that supports original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and economic performance. Funds for this project were provided through the Foundation's Digital Information Technology program, which leverages developments in information technology to increase the effectiveness of computational research and scholarly communication. www.sloan.org.
The Association of Research Libraries (ARL) is a nonprofit organization of 125 research libraries in the US and Canada. ARL’s mission is to influence the changing environment of scholarly communication and the public policies that affect research libraries and the diverse communities they serve. ARL pursues this mission by advancing the goals of its member research libraries, providing leadership in public and information policy to the scholarly and higher education communities, fostering the exchange of ideas and expertise, facilitating the emergence of new roles for research libraries, and shaping a future environment that leverages its interests with those of allied organizations. ARL is on the web at www.arl.org.
The Association of American Universities (AAU) is a nonprofit association of 60 US and two Canadian preeminent public and private research universities. Founded in 1900, AAU focuses on national and institutional issues that are important to research-intensive universities, including funding for research, research and education policy, and graduate and undergraduate education. AAU is on the web at www.aau.edu.
The Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU) is a research, policy, and advocacy organization representing 235 public research universities, land-grant institutions, state university systems, and affiliated organizations. Founded in 1887, APLU is North America’s oldest higher education association with member institutions in all 50 US states, the District of Columbia, four US territories, Canada, and Mexico. Annually, member campuses enroll 4.7 million undergraduates and 1.3 million graduate students, award 1.1 million degrees, employ 1.3 million faculty and staff, and conduct $41 billion in university-based research. APLU is on the web at www.aplu.org.